This is just a blog of my random thoughts. This will be a collection of everything from my thoughts, to funny things I find on the net to whatever else I decide to post. From being a parent, to being a husband, to everyday life with a MS patient.
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Saturday, March 3, 2012

Genetic Disaster

For those that don’t know, my wife has MS. What most people don’t know about MS is it comes and goes, or at least the symptoms do. She can go a long time without feeling anything and then BAM! it knocks her on her ass. But what seems to be more of an issue, is my wife can’t just sit her ass down and take it easy until the symptoms pass. Don’t get me wrong, I’m glad she doesn’t let the MS get the best of her. And she doesn’t let it stop her. But on the other hand, I see how much pain she’s in when she does decide to take it easy. Of course, for her, taking it easy is only doing the laundry and straightening up instead of everybody else’s taking it easy of sitting on their ass and doing nothing. I respect her for pushing it and giving the disease a big “FU” but I hate seeing her in pain.

If you don’t know what MS (Multiple Sclerosis) is, the best way I’ve had it described to me is that she has lesions on her brain, multiple, if I remember correctly 15 of them. And for the most part, they are just there. But what they do is block her brain from sending signals to the rest of her body. For instance, when she takes a shower, the lesions block the signal to the rest of her body to cool down. She comes out of the shower and starts to sweat where as the rest of us start to cool down. That is a daily symptom that she deals with. Actually take the time to think about that, think about how warm your body is when you get out of that hot shower. Now think about staying that hot, while your trying to get dressed or doing your hair. There’s days where she gets out of the shower, turns on the fan and lays in bed just to cool down. So you can understand why she hates to take showers.

Her “flare up” that she is dealing with now is her legs. They are just weak. She explains it as her legs feel like the day after she just worked out for the first time. Or for me that would be the way I felt a few months ago after my brother talked me into playing basketball again. My legs were dead for the next week. But at least I did it to myself. She has no choice. Yesterday she went shopping with her sister. I love when she does things with her sisters because she has such a good time and for 20 years, she hardly saw them so she loves spending time with them and really enjoys seeing her niece’s and nephew’s. But all the time away from just sitting and relaxing in her recliner has kicked her ass. I don’t want her not to go because it’s a good time and she gets away from home for a day, but on the other hand, I don’t want her to be in more pain.

Of course, her being in pain is relative. She’s always in pain. Just because the MS flare’s up doesn’t mean she isn’t in pain all the time. Along with the MS, she has fibromyalgia, hashimoto’s disease, diabete’s and arthritis in her lower spine. I’ve linked all those to the symptoms of each disease. Every one of those has fatigue listed. Fibromyalgia is essentially pain everywhere. There is no cure, there is only pain management. So she is on a wide range of drugs to help with the pain. Which all have their side effects, that she takes more drugs for. So as you can see, it is a vicious circle.

So to break it all down, as her daughter calls her, she’s a genetic disaster. But with all these issues, she still gets my kids up and to and from school, takes care of the housework and has supper on the table most days. She is a marvel and is amazing. She takes care of everyone through all of it. Sure she has her issues, she can be moody and short. But knowing all she does for everyone, I look past it. I just wish the kids could see all she does for them and understand why she gets that way. That includes her 16 year old who takes advantage of her on a daily basis.

I guess I kind of went off of what I was originally planning on talking about. Hopefully you got something out of this. I guess by posting this, when I bitch about her mood’s, you all can look down on me for it instead of her.

I know I promised some humor. But I usually like to post 5 toons or pics and I only have 4. I will look for another one today and maybe post them tomorrow.